Tag Archives: Shepard Fairey

The two formerly jailed members of Pussy Riot, Masha and Nadya are finally coming to Los Angeles, on Monday. They’ll be on a panel also featuring Wayne Kramer, Ann Litt, Shepard Fairey, and Pyotyr Verzilov. The panel is sponsored by The Voice Project.

Like this:

The idea of putting photos of musicians next to photos of boxers seemed dubious to me at first. The violence of the mosh pit is something I’d rather not celebrate; the dance of the mosh pit I love. But the Rock Fight show that opened last night at Project Gallery in Hollywood, copresented by the Morrison Hotel Gallery, was actually really interesting. As host Henry Rollins said, there’s as much showmanship in the ring as on the stage, and there can be an element of combat in a concert. Some of the juxtapositions of images were brilliant, like Bob Gruen’s shot of Debbie Harry next to Theo Ehret’s Luchadore. The boxing photos were all by Ehret, the music photographers included my buddies Catherine McGann and Janette Beckman. I’d have liked there to have been more images of women; let’s face it, there was a fair does of testosterone in the room.

Shepard Fairey was there; I gave him a copy of Queens of Noise and he talked about his cover art for the new Joan Jett album. He and my “date,” radio star Mandalit Del Barco, discussed public radio and Jeffrey Deitch. All in all, a cool night out.

Like this:

Studying with fan studies pioneer and author Henry Jenkins has been a highlight of my fellowship at USC. If I had known people like Henry were going to knock cultural studies off of its podium pedantry, I might have stayed with academia (probably not). His New Media Literacies course exposed me to ideas about digital culture that have inspired my own research projects. So I’m extremely honored that he is posting my final paper on his blog, http://henryjenkins.org/. It’s about Shepard Fairey, punk rock, fair use, free culture, Obam, hope, and appropriative art. Let us know what you think. First part today, second Friday.

Like this:

When I visited street-artist-made-good Shepard Fairey at his Echo Park studio recently, he seemed slightly defensive. Who could blame him, given the kinds of attack his fame as the maker of the Obama Hope poster has brought on. He’s unveiling new works at Art Basel Miami Beach this week; here’s the article I wrote for The Miami Herald.

Being the poster child (so to speak) for street urchins’/artists’ fight against the Man has not dampened Shepard Fairey’s sense of humor, much. At his Visions and Voices conversation with Annenberg School professor Sarah Benet-Weiser November 4, the creator of the most widely seen piece of art in recent history — the Barack Obama Hope poster — was not afraid to crack jokes at the expense of the Associated Press, his corporate combatant in an increasingly nasty legal battle that’s testing the parameters of copyright law. When a Fairey handler tried to tamp down the artist’s response to a question about the mutual AP suits, he pointed out that anyone could find the points about fair use that he was trying to make: “You can go on Google, like I did to get the image.” The crowd chuckled warmly at the jester’s mask of guilelessness.

Being the next Napster-like leader in the new media war against old media has made Fairey a bit of a rock star. Fans showed up to the overbooked Annenberg Auditorium clutching posters and conspiracy theories, like so many badges of subversion. Relaxed in an armchair with his chiseled profile, like the overgrown skater boi he is, Fairey both ate up and deflected the attention. He was funnily and charmingly self-aware. “I might be at the tail end of the hipster cycle now,” he said, after having spent about an hour discussing slides showing his evolution from the sticker mania of Andre the Giant and Obey through his anti-Bush Constructivist propaganda to the thoroughly and unapologetically un-ironic 2008 campaign posters.

Fairey did get a bit tongue-tied when he tried to explain why he lied about his original source for the Obama posters, the subject of his litigation battle with the AP. As political as his work can be, there’s always been a certain moral ambiguity in its tactics — some would say that ambiguity is another word for hypocrisy. But there still can’t seem to be little doubt that, as he argued, the Hope poster meet the criteria for fair use. Certainly, it seems very Goliath/NARAS-like for the MSM to be picking on a punk rocker from South Carolina in this way. They’re making Fairey a martyred spokesperson; his Annenberg appearance showed that given the right jury, he could easily persuade them of his righteousness. Plus, he makes some pretty damn good art. If he didn’t, no one would bother messing with him.